Lisa Margonelli: All Related Content

Since 2007, California has experienced a solar boom. Photovoltaic panels rest on 107,159 rooftops, as of this writing (the numbers are updated here every Wednesday). Driven by incentives that are bankrolled by every Californian who pays a utility bill, Californians now have more than one Gigawatt of solar capacity installed over our heads That’s a lot: one Gigawatt is roughly the size of one of the state’s four nuclear power plants, although solar PV panels do not produce power at the steady, even rate that nukes do.

Yesterday, everyone involved in the support and opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline got what they wanted: Obama tossed a squib to environmentalist supporters whom he's previously disappointed, and Republican boosters of the pipeline got to turn the Obama's refusal (which they accelerated by attaching a February 21 deadline for approval to the payroll tax bill) into a talking point against Obama in the upcoming election. In a country without a greenhouse gas strategy or an energy policy, this is passing for political action, but it's really... nothing, a draw, a symbol of symbols.

Gasoline-wise, 2011 has been a very expensive year. Who knows what gas prices 2012 will bring? Rather than giving lovely gadgets that will only consume more energy, like everyone else, here are three ways to stuff the gift of *less gas* this holiday season.

So far, we haven't faced any true problems of scarcity of oil or other fossil fuels. What we have faced are high prices, which are the result of constraints in fuel production, shipping and refining around the world. Finding more oil will not necessarily bring down the price of gasoline in the U.S. unless supply significantly exceeds demand — and there's no incentive for oil producers to make that happen. What's more, U.S. refineries now export around 536,000 barrels of gasoline a day — more than we have since World War II — so U.S. consumers pay the world’s going rate for gasoline.

Lisa Margonelli discusses with WTOP her new research, dubbed the "Energy Trap," that paints a troubling picture of the middle class burdened by rising gas prices.

Original article

Consumers also have a role to play if we're going to shift manufacturing back home, said Lisa Margonelli at the New American Foundation. “We're going to have to come to terms with a new sense of what globalization mean to us. ...

Bashing green energy has recently become a major Republican talking point. Darrell Issa, once a champion of green-job stimulus funds for his district, held a House oversight committee hearing titled "How Obama's Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs." Rush Limbaugh says green energy is a "slush fund" that takes money from unwitting taxpayers under the guise of saving the planet and rewards Democratic donors.

... on our strengths - which is letting the venture capital community do its work, and letting the government do its work and letting consumers become really sophisticated shoppers in this sphere," Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation said. ...

... On today’s Backstory, Lisa Margonelli, director of the Energy Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation, explains what lessons the Solyndra bankruptcy can teach us about federal investment in green energy and how countries like Germany and China are bolstering their green energy sectors.

The solar panel company Solyndra filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. Lisa Margonelli, director of the Energy Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation discusses why the Obama Administration loaned the company over $500 million and how the company failed anyway.

Original article

WTOP interviews Lisa Margonelli about her thoughts on Michele Bachmann's promise to return gas prices to $2-a-gallon should she be elected president.

Original article

President Obama now finds himself between a pipeline and a hard place. With his green supporters getting arrested on the White House lawn and pressure to okay the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from the State Department, the president is in yet another no-win situation. If he had fully articulated a 21st-century low carbon energy plan, or pushed through a climate change bill or even treaty, he'd be able to okay the pipeline and point to his larger strategy.